Is it possible to extract part of a Jira issue description in Confluence, rather than all of it?

Question

I'm trying to figure out a way to pull out a segment of a Jira issue description in Confluence. Using the Jira issue/filter, I can pull in all of the issue descriptions I need, however, I was curious if it was possible to pull a segment of the description. For example, in the description field we list the Legal Partner, Compliance Partner, etc. Due to corporate policy, we are not allowed to add custom fields to Jira or add plugins, so we house miscellaneous data in the description. We'd like to pull the Legal Partner name and Compliance Partner name out of the greater description using JQL if possible.

This thread seems similar to my ask but it's using smart values and match function in Jira versus confluence.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/Pulling-information-out-of-description-using-Automation-For-Jira/qaq-p/652783

Thanks!

Ahmed Salem_zuuzjm · Answer

Hi @Petter Gonçalves ,

I have a similar request. I want to have an automated job that extracts some text (usually starts with "error-*") from a Custom Field and paste this text in a Confluence page.

Is there a way to do this?

Petter Gonçalves · Answer

Hello @Joshua Weis

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Per your description, I understand that you would like to display in a Confluence page only a specific text part of the description field in your issues, filtering it by using a JQL query. Is that correct?

JQL queries can be used to return whole issues that match a specific text string in some text fields, however, it can not be used to return a specific text string of any issue field, so I'm afraid the feature you are looking for is not possible to be achieved. At least, not using JQL queries.

That being said, I would like to go a little bit further in the following statement:

Due to corporate policy, we are not allowed to add custom fields to Jira or add plugins, so we house miscellaneous data in the description.

I agree that third-party add-ons may cause some security violations depending on your team policies and you also have to deal with extra costs, however, the use of inbuilt custom fields of Jira application would not cause any problems.

In fact, collect data from a custom field is even more secure than collecting from the description field when talking about data privacy between the users of your site. This statement is supported by the fact that custom fields can be restricted with contexts for specific issue types and projects, while this can not be achieved for the description field:

Add a context to a custom field

Could you please give us more details on why the use of custom fields can not be considered? Maybe we can come up with more options once we have that information.

Let us know if you have any questions.